The `Liberace` Of The Violin

June 8, 1986|BY STUART McIVER

AT A HOTEL IN WASHINGton, D.C., he once registered as ``Rubinoff and his Violin.`` They were an inseparable pair.

David Rubinoff was solo violinist and orchestra leader on the Chase & Sanborn Hour with Eddie Cantor, the most popular radio show in America from 1932 to 1934. At his peak, Rubinoff played more concerts than any other musician in the country, averaging 300 a year.

His showmanship drew crowds that would make today`s rock stars envious. Once, in Chicago`s Grant Park, 225,000 people attended an open-air Rubinoff concert.

Among Rubinoff`s many fans was a Miami cabinet maker named Charles Roman. Born in Hungary in 1893, Roman came to Miami in 1917. Years later he declared, ``I am now a cracker.``

A master craftsman, Roman formed the Royal Palm Furniture Co. He specialized in building humidity-resistant, solid-wood furniture, carved from native woods -- oak, gum, ash and magnolia.

It was Roman`s hobby, however, that brought him to Rubinoff. Understandably, for a native of Hungary, he loved the violin. In fact, he made more than a hundred of them.

Rubinoff owned a Roman violin and delighted the cabinet maker by playing it on occasion when he performed in Miami.

Most of the time, however, Rubinoff`s violin was his 200-year-old Stradivarius, insured for $100,000.

Rubinoff was born in Grodno, Russia, in 1897. At age 5 he was playing the balalaika so well that the town`s music master gave him free lessons. His parents, who had wanted him to be a barber, invested $3 in a violin. A scholarship to the Warsaw Conservatory launched him on his musical career. When he was 15, his family moved to Pittsburgh.

``He was one of the great showmen of the business -- a good violinist rather than a great violinist, but a showman who gave the impression of being all the great violinists put together. He was a ham, publicity conscious, publicity wise and publicity wild.``